These Nameless Things

by Shawn Smucker

  “Take your time,” Abe encouraged him.

  But John had made up his mind already. He shook his head firmly. “I can’t.” He walked away, past Miho’s house, past the tree, out onto the plains.

  “John!” Abe called after him, but he didn’t look back.

  Abe seemed deflated. Why couldn’t we all have hashed these things out privately?

  “Well,” Abe said, his voice a quiet breeze, his eyes vacant and far away. “Well.”

  “I can go,” Misha said.

  “Yes,” Abe replied absently. “Yes, of course.”

  She looked at me the entire time she spoke, as if it was only us.

  “The memory came back to me first in numbers,” she said. Her voice was calm and deliberate, like a surgeon’s. “The date, the hours of my shift, and the blood pressure of the woman we were helping in the back of the ambulance. I can’t remember her name, but I remember another number—it was our third visit to her that week, and it was early in the week. She was always calling the ambulance. Sometimes we could placate her in the house, other times we put her on the stretcher, and occasionally we had to wheel her out and actually load her into the vehicle before she came around.”

  This was the most I had ever heard Misha speak at one time.

  “I tightened the cuff and pumped it up and watched the dial drift down, stethoscope buds in my ears as I listened to the strong beating of her very old heart. I told her she was recovering, playing along with her as I had learned to do. My two colleagues had already returned to the front seat. They were less patient. She nodded, sighed, made some excuse, and I helped her back to the sidewalk, holding her arm as we climbed the three steps to her front stoop. She went in and closed the door without a word. I looked at the guys in the front seat and shrugged. They were laughing. I started laughing. But by the time I came around and climbed in through the passenger door, they had stopped laughing.”

  Misha’s words came out calm, but her hands were busy: smoothing the fabric of her pants, tracing the veins in her wrist, squeezing into tiny fists.

  “The driver pulled away quickly, and I told him to take it easy. My friend in the middle seat held up his cell phone and I stared at it. He had received a message from a friend at the grocery store before the call even came in. ‘Small plane down in Kellerman’s parking lot. Get here fast.’

  “More numbers come back to me. The siren was on and the lights were flashing, and we flew past 4th Street, 5th Street, and 6th Street. I glanced at the speedometer—45, 50, 60. I was never afraid of blood, and my stomach never turned at injuries, no matter how gruesome. I could pull a stitch through someone’s flesh without balking. I once held someone’s scalp onto their head while we raced to the hospital. But there was one thing I could never get used to: speeding through red-light intersections, passing cars on the wrong side, slipping along the shoulder.”

  She paused. “The rain began to fall. Quite a storm.” She exchanged looks with Miss B and Po. None of them smiled or cried or gave any kind of expression.

  “Smoke already rose from the grocery store parking lot. We had to wind our way among the other vehicles blocking the way. Some people fled, afraid more planes would fall from the sky. Others sat in their parked cars, staring but not wanting to get close. Others did gather close and stood in the open as if the rain wasn’t pouring down on them. There was no fire, but smoke rose from the plane’s engine. Sadness rose in me as I saw multiple bodies lying motionless, but the mechanical, numbers side of me pushed the sadness down. I became a robot. We set up a small triage area, the three of us making our way from body to body. I prayed another ambulance would arrive, but none came, not right away. There were a few we moved on from. A baby. An elderly man. They were clearly gone.”

  I thought the man must have been Mary St. Clair’s father. A small sound came from Miss B, like the homing signal on a piece of electrical equipment. Nothing more than a chirp or a hiccup. Circe was weeping hard without making a sound.

  “I got to the plane first,” Misha continued. “A pilot and three passengers. They all appeared deceased, but I tried to pry open the door to get closer, checking vitals with my hands, looking for signs of life. Through the shattered window of the plane I could see my colleagues working on two people. I cycled through the three passengers. They were gone. I reached for the pilot to confirm that he, too, was dead. You know those dolls made of cloth with sewn joints, full of cotton? You know how their legs fold and bend in any direction? That was the pilot’s legs. They were folded and rolled up under him as if they had no bones.”

  She paused again. “Then he gasped. The pilot, I mean. He was alive. I shouted for the others to give me a hand. He screamed, the pain bringing him back to consciousness. We pulled him from the plane. I knew right away, when I grabbed under his arms and pulled, that he was intoxicated. I could smell it. We placed him gently on the pavement. The crowd had grown. Another ambulance arrived. And another. And another. We loaded up the bodies.”

  She shook her head. “I was soaked through, and my anger at the pilot rose up in me like a storm. He screamed the entire time he was being loaded into the ambulance. We covered three bodies, and I stumbled as I walked away from them. I heard a mother cry out for her little girl whose body was still under the sheet. ‘But she’s getting wet,’ her broken voice said. Two officers held her back. I went over and held her close. It was Circe. ‘But she’s getting wet.’ She kept saying that over and over again, and her voice turned into a whisper. But she didn’t stop.”

  15 The Fire

  CIRCE LET OUT a sound, a tiny sob, and Misha leaned over and put an arm around her. A tightness wrapped itself around my chest like a constricting band, and I found it difficult to breathe. My brother had done this. My brother had caused all of these people, my friends, tremendous pain. I wanted to run away, but I sat there like everyone else, not saying a word, not knowing what to do next.

  That’s when I felt something else—anger at these people who had called themselves my friends. These stories they were telling me, about how my brother the pilot had ruined their lives or stolen someone they loved seemed to invalidate my waiting. All this time! All these long days! I had been waiting for someone they now found despicable, unworthy. They had turned my brother into a monster.

  Evening approached, with the dusk spilling in over the mountain. Shadows pooled around us, some filling up the alleyways and the hollows, some creeping in behind the rocks that lined the base of the mountain. I found my anger deepening into something close to hate. I couldn’t look at them. I hoped Miho wouldn’t tell her story, because I didn’t think I could stay any longer if someone else spoke, if someone else piled their own bitterness onto my brother.

  John returned wordlessly from the plains, a massive bulk of firewood in his arms. He knelt in silence before the fire pit, spread the wood, struck a match. I was suddenly glad he hadn’t told his story. I didn’t need to hear it all again from a different angle, over and over.

  We all watched the fire grow as if it was the most interesting thing on earth, this concentration of heat, this speeding up of molecules, this splintering of wood, the way it turned into ghostly smoke. Our fire made the approaching shadows feint back and forth, this way and that. But out over the plains, a nameless darkness gathered, thick and new and frightening.

  I thought of Mary, now one day’s journey away. It seemed like ages since she had left. How many trees had she passed? How many long, empty stretches? Could she still see the mountain, or was it only a thin purple thread on the horizon?

  I put my face in my hands. I felt spent, like I had run a long way, and I could tell the others all felt the same. Lucia sat hunched and almost disinterested, the way teenagers often do. She picked at the skin on her knee. She stared up into the sky.

  Miho leaned toward me. Her hand moved, and I thought she was reaching for mine, something that would have given me a lot of comfort, considering everything that was taking place. But in the end, her hand dropped to he
r side.

  “Miho?” Abe said. “Are you ready to tell your story?”

  But I interrupted. I didn’t even know what I was going to say. I would make something up. “I . . .” I began, but there was nothing. What words would make sense following all of that? What could I say that would make them stop? Miho of all people! I didn’t need to hear her version of how my brother had ruined her life.

  Then I started to worry. What if my brother showed up now, in the midst of all this? What would they do to him? Tear him to pieces? Only minutes ago I had been paranoid about being left here in town all alone, but now I wanted them to leave. I wanted them to go east without me, every single one of them, so I could wait for my brother in peace and welcome him. I could nurse him back to health. He would see what he had done and he would be sorry.

  It’s hard to remember the exact sequence of events after that. Everything seemed to happen simultaneously. Miho was staring into the fire, and its orange light spilled from her eyes. But it was too much light, and I realized she wasn’t looking at our small fire—she was looking beyond it, out over the village roofs, and the fire reflected in her eyes wasn’t the one in between all of us. No, there was a larger fire, growing like a monster.

  “What’s that?” she asked in a flat voice, dread leaking out.

  Everyone stood, and sounds of surprise and alarm rose. A fire burned among the houses, the flames moving in a strange kind of synchronicity, darting up and down, flowing in and out of the shadows, peeking around corners and playing with each other.

  While we had been speaking, a fire had started, spread out through many of the houses, and rose above the roof lines, seemingly everywhere. The flames farther up the hill rose higher, as if that was where the whole thing had started.

  Farther up the hill. Toward my house.

  “Grab your things!” Po shouted. “We have to get out of this place! It’s time to go!”

  “Wait a minute!” Abe replied, raising his hands, trying to calm everyone. But he was too late—the group had scattered. Even Miss B limped quickly down the hill toward the greenway, but she barely made it twenty yards down the greenway when the smoke clouded the sight of her and overcame her, and she collapsed. Her form came and went in the gray billowing, and I thought we might lose her.

  “Miss B!” Circe screamed, running to her side and pulling her back.

  The others, too, had scattered into the smoke and the flames. Abe followed one person, then another, trying to call them back to him. But it was total chaos. I could hear voices shouting, first for each other, then for help. Some of them came back to the patio after attempting to get to their homes, coughing and retching.

  “We have to stay calm,” Abe insisted, wiping sweat from his dark face.

  Soon everyone had returned. No one had been able to get anything out of their houses. No one had even been able to get close. We gathered beside Miho’s house, which by that time was also in flames, and the heat forced us farther away, back beside the oak tree. The crackling sound grew louder, the beams of her house split, and the roof caved in like a piece of rotten fruit.

  “We have to leave. Now,” Po said. “We need to head east. Something’s going on. Maybe they’re coming for us from inside the mountain. We have to go.”

  John echoed his agreement. The women nodded too. I looked out into the darkness, in the direction of the first tree. Is this how it was all going to end?

  Abe nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. “Let me think. Just give me a minute.”

  “What’s there to think about?” Po demanded. He paced and ran his hand through his blazing red hair. “How did this happen?” he practically screamed, waving his hand toward the flames.

  Miho sat on the grass and wept, pulling her knees up to her chest and rocking back and forth. Lucia fell to the ground beside her, hugging her. I wanted to go to them, to comfort them, but a sudden suspicion entered my mind.

  The fire had begun at the top of my hill.

  Toward my house.

  I sprinted away, following the greenway through the flames and the smoke.

  “Dan!” I heard Miho shout, and the voices of the others joined her, calling out to me.

  It was like another world in there, a foggy place full of nightmares and heat and flames. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth and tried to run with my eyes closed, but they still teared up. The flames reached for me and my sleeve caught on fire. I slapped it until it went out, running the whole time, feeling the sting of hot embers glancing off my face.

  The rain was the only thing that saved me. It came down in hard pellets, and while it didn’t drown out the fire, it diminished it enough to clear the air. Soon I was on the other side of the scorched and burning village, running up the hill to my own house, the greenway slick beneath my feet. Everything smelled of smoke and heat and, somehow, also of spring rain and new life. It left me feeling incongruous, disconnected, and unsure of myself or of what to do next.

  I ran to the front door and pushed it open. My house was not on fire. I saw her immediately, sitting in the chair that faced the glass doors, looking out over the plains. When she spoke, the pitch of her voice was willowy and light. I didn’t recognize the sound of her at first, and I turned to see if someone else had walked in behind me, if someone else was speaking.

  “You have to go get your brother,” she said again, and this time I realized it was her.

  “I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t go back in there.”

  “Not alone,” she said, standing, and something of her old voice returned, soft and imploring. “Not alone, no, you can’t go there alone. But you have friends. Good friends. They’ll go with you.”

  I didn’t think they would. No matter how sweet her voice, no matter how convincing, she didn’t know them. I couldn’t picture any of them coming with me back over the mountain, back into that hell. Nothing could get them there—not Po’s anger or Circe’s sadness or Miho’s disappointment. We were all too afraid of that place. And besides, now they all hated my brother. Why would they save him?

  No, wait. Abe would go with me. Abe would do it if I asked him. But I couldn’t ask him. I couldn’t.

  And so it was just me. The thought of going over there alone sent such violent shudders through my body, I thought I might collapse.

  “Did you do this?” I asked, trying to look into her eyes and failing. “Did you start the fire?” My voice was weak and tired, where hers was firm and unrelenting. But there was something there that seemed to be at its end. Was she losing patience? Did she feel something slipping through her grasp?

  She gave a half laugh and shook her head. “No. Why would I have done that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked at me with a smile that was almost sad, as if she felt bad about what she was going to say. “It was Abe.”

  “Abe?” I asked, shocked.

  She nodded, and I thought I saw her smile turn a shade less sad.

  “Why would Abe do this? And how? He was sitting with us the whole time.”

  She didn’t say the question back to me, but it was in her gaze, as if the answer was inside of me somewhere if I would only look honestly. So I did. I don’t know why I let her direct me in this way, but I followed the question as it looped around in my chest and my mind, and the answer came to me. When I spoke, my words came out in a whisper.

  “Because he wants us all to go east?”

  Again, she didn’t confirm my answer with a nod or any sound. But the look on her face said, “And?”

  “And Abe thought we’d stay here forever if he didn’t do something drastic?”

  She sighed. Anger swelled in my gut, pumped into my face, red and pulsing. I paced frantically, moving in a kind of frenetic pattern of distracted anxiety.

  “He wouldn’t do this!” But my words were shallow and had no bearing on what I had started to believe. “He wouldn’t.”

  She didn’t argue with me. She sighed again.

  “But what a
bout my brother?” I asked, again in hushed tones.

  She shook her head. I thought of all the times Abe had reassured me there was no hurry. He would stay with me as long as I wanted to wait. Had even Abe reached his breaking point? Had he and Miho conspired without me, tried to figure out how they could motivate me to go? Were all the stories changing the way they felt about me? Maybe now that they knew what my brother had done, even they couldn’t imagine staying with me.

  Maybe Abe had instructed John to go around and start the fire, then come back with wood he had arranged beforehand. It was all coming together in my mind, and because lying came so naturally to me, it was easy to see it in others.

  “Come,” she said, holding out her hand. She led me to the front door of my house, out onto the greenway, and up the hill toward the canyon that led back into the mountain. I looked over my shoulder once, but all I saw was the village burning down, the flames already lower, the houses collapsing in on themselves. Smoke billowed up as the rain fell, but even the rain was slowing. I could hear the drops hissing in the charred ash.

  Could Abe really have done that? Could he have destroyed everything that made up our lives?

  We approached the gap in the mountain, the sliver of an opening that went back into the canyon. The woman’s hand was soft and cool, and sometimes she reached over with her other hand so that she held on to me with both of them, leading me, beckoning me. The sign welcomed us to the opening.

  THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY

  THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN

  THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST

  The unreadable lines seemed to grow sharper, but the letters were still jumbled or too close together, or perhaps the words were written in another language. But the last line was still there, clear, breathtaking.

  ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE

  “I can’t,” I said.

  She reached up and touched my cheek, the gentlest nudge, moving my face toward hers. “You have to.”